Page 1 of Me and Mr. Darcy

Chapter One

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single girl in possession of her right mind must be in want of a decent man.

There’s just one problem . . .

‘. . . so we had a drink each and shared a pizza, but you asked for two extra toppings on your half, which means you owe . . . Hang on a minute, I’ve got a calculator on my BlackBerry . . .’

Sitting in a little Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I stare across the checked tablecloth and watch, dumbfounded, as my date pulls out his CrackBerry and proceeds to cheerfully divvy up the bill.

. . . where on earth do you find a decent man these days?

I’m having dinner with John, a thirty-something architect I met briefly at a friend’s birthday party last weekend. He seemed nice enough when he asked for my number – nice enough to share a pizza with on a Tuesday evening after work, anyway – but now, watching him hunched over the table, number-crunching, I’m fast realising I’ve made a mistake.

‘. . . an extra seven dollars seventy-five cents, and that includes tax and tip,’ he declares triumphantly, and shows me the screen to prove it.

A very big mistake.

To be honest, I blame Mr Darcy.

I was just twelve years old when I first read Pride and Prejudice and I fell for him right from the start. Forget fresh-faced Joey from New Kids on the Block or leather-clad Michael Hutchence from INXS – whose posters I had tacked to my wall – Mr Darcy was my first love. Devastatingly handsome, mysterious, smouldering and a total romantic, he set the bar for all my future boyfriends. Snuggled under the bedcovers with my flashlight, I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could find a man like him.

But now I have grown up. And here I am, still looking.

Digging out a twenty-dollar bill from my pocket, I pass it to John.

‘Have you got the seventy-five cents?’ he prompts, his hand still outstretched.

You have got to be kidding.

Except he’s not.

‘Oh . . . um . . . sure,’ I mutter, and begin rooting around in my change purse.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not Renée Zellweger. I don’t need a man to complete me. I have a career, I pay my own rent, I have a set of power tools and I know how to use them. And as for the other thing, well, that’s what battery-operated toys were invented for.

I hand John the seventy-five cents. Then watch in disbelief as he proceeds to count it.

Still, that doesn’t stop me hankering after a bit of that good-old fashioned romance I’m always reading about in books. Or daydreaming about meeting someone who could sweep me off my Uggs and set my pulse racing. A dark, handsome, faithful man, with impeccable manners, brooding good looks, witty conversation and one of those big, broad, manly chests you can rest your head upon . . .

Instead, in the last twelve months I’ve been on one disastrous date after another. Now, OK, I know everyone has a bad-date story to tell. It’s completely normal. Who hasn’t been out with Creepy Guy/Mr Nothing in Common With/The Forty-something Fuck-up (delete as applicable, or in my case, don’t delete any of them)? It’s just part of being single. It has to happen once. And twice is bad luck. But a whole string of them?

For example, here are a few off the top of my head:

Bart had ‘issues with intimacy’. Translated, this meant he wouldn’t hold my hand as it was ‘too intimate’, but it was perfectly OK to ask me back to his to watch a porn movie on our first date.

Aaron wore white cowboy boots. Which is bad enough. But after cancelling on me at the last minute, telling me that he had to work late, I spotted the boots glowing in the darkness of the movie theatre that night. Scroll up and there was Aaron on the back row with his tongue down another girl’s throat.

Then there was Daniel, the nice Jewish banker who invited me over for a home-cooked dinner. Unfortunately, he ‘forgot’ to tell me it was his mother doing the cooking. Sorry, did I say mother? I mean, smother. Five courses and three hours of listening to how fabulous Daniel was later, I managed to escape before she got out the baby photos.

And now there’s John, otherwise known as Mr Chivalrous . . .

‘So, how about we do this again?’ he’s asking me now as we’re leaving the restaurant.

‘Oh—’ I open my mouth to reply but instead give a muffled yelp as John lets the door swing back in my face. I just manage to stop it with my elbow. Not that he notices – he’s already on the sidewalk lighting up a cigarette.

Rubbing my bruised elbow, I join him outside. After the warmth of the restaurant the cold hits me immediately. It’s December in New York and it’s way below zero.

‘What are you doing Friday?’ he persists, raising his eyebrows and taking a drag of his cigarette.